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All Rise...

The Charge

"Fortunate are those that remember the tale of Byston
Well."—Narrator

The Case

Back in the days of bootleg VHS tapes with no subtitles, we used to watch a
lot of anime and try to figure out what the heck was going on. A lot of fuss was
made about Mobile Suit Gundam, a complex 1979 space opera from Yoshiyuki
Tomino. I was never much of a Gundam fan, but many of my friends loved
the show's attempt to portray war in a fairly adult fashion for a cartoon. Lots
of other people liked it too. Tomino's hit show has spawned an endless franchise
of sequel shows, "side-stories" (alternate universe tales), theatrical
features, and enough model kits to keep Bandai in the black until the end of
time. Some of them have been good (Char's Counterattack, the live-action
G-Saviour) and some have been bad (G Gundam). But they never stop.
Never. And even Tomino finds himself coming back again and again, seemingly
trapped in the Gundam universe.

For a brief moment, Tomino thought he could escape. After the success of the
original series, he turned his attention to something fresh, something so far
from the space opera of Gundam that to even describe it sounds a little
bit mad. In fact, he did not even want mecha in it, until Bandai insisted he
provide the obligatory merchandising tie-ins. See if you can follow this: Show
Zama, budding motorcross star, is magically transported to a medieval kingdom
filled with magical creatures. As a visitor from "Upper Earth," he is
immediately put to work as the pilot of an organic armor suit, powered by
magical energy ("aura") and built by fellow Upper-Earther Shot Weapon.
Show quickly finds himself caught in the middle of a civil war between the
treacherous Lord Drake Luft and Neal Given, whose royal house was assassinated
by Drake. For 49 episodes, we get battles, romantic entanglements, shifting
allegiances, and a war filled with gray areas.

Sound a lot like Gundam?

The most surprising thing about Aura Battler Dunbine is not its much
touted mecha design (sort of insectoid) or its action (the animation, from 1983,
is rather dated)—it is the intelligent writing. Of course, this is
difficult to spot in the first episode, in which Show is thrown into this
alternate world and accepts every crazy event without question. The lack of
exposition and continuity is enough to make a viewer give up right from the
start. But the series backs up in episode 2 and begins to round out its
characters and world. The characters are driven (and often misled) by their own
ambitions and rationalizations, giving them some psychological depth. And Tomino
even throws in a little ethnic tension between the Japanese Show and his
American rivals: quite unusual for an action cartoon. And if you think about it,
the show takes on an added depth 20 years later: it is really about Tomino
himself, as Show cannot escape his vague destiny or the world he has been sucked
into.

The premise of Aura Battler Dunbine is initially somewhat hard to
swallow: Gundam meets A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
But viewers who can keep up with the enormous cast (ADV helpfully provides liner
notes—you'll need them) and the labyrinthine plot may find this an
interesting series. ADV does not offer much in the way of extras—the
aforementioned liner notes, original opening and closing sequences, and a short
production art gallery—and they package too few episodes on a disc. At $30
for five episodes (four on subsequent discs), this series is going to suck all
the aura out of your bank account. But Gundam fans who have only recently
discovered the franchise from one of its imported incarnations on the Cartoon
Network will find Dunbine worth their attention.